Since releasing EdiCue v1 nearly 12 years ago to the day, I’ve received an abundance of user feedback and feature requests for the application. As I live in Australia, I would implement an update while clients slept, where possible, so they could wake up to an email containing a link to download a pre-release version. Other requests required extra patience.

As this list grew steadily over time, these updates created a patchwork of settings in the application with no room to add new features. On top of this, because the PDF layouts were fixed, adding new fields or allowing for changes became difficult to manage. What EdiCue really needed was what a lot of users had been asking for, the option to personally design the layouts of the PDFs it created.

Enter EdiCue v3

Starting with a 64-bit app, and a clean slate, the new EdiCue main window has been created. All of the old EdiCue v2 preferences and settings have been reorganised onto new settings tabs and stored in a new production settings file. A PDF layout list and band designer window has been added, along with custom controls to address the long list of feature requests. During the development, macOS dark mode was integrated and AAF exports were added to replace the old 32-bit PTX session code.

I’m proud to present EdiCue v3. It’s been an honour to work with some of the industry’s top supervisors and dialogue editors, and I trust that I’ve hit the mark with this update. Many thanks for all the suggestions and for my beta testers for nudging me to add those final tweaks.

We are pleased to announce that Sounds In Sync will be exhibiting at the AES show in New York, Oct 17-19. Meet founder and developer Mark Franken for a demo of any of our products and see how they integrate with Pro Tools to perform a variety of tasks including cueing and recording ADR, conforming location WAV files and re-conforming Pro Tools sessions.

To register for the show with a free "exhibits plus" pass click the following link:

Now that Avid have released Pro Tools 2019.5 and qualified it to run with macOS Mojave (10.14.4) * we tested our applications on a system with these installed.

All functions of our applications performed as expected including how they interact with Pro Tools. However macOS Mojave now displays additional security messages when our apps are used in the following way:

EdiCue – Opening the session interface window for the first time

EdiPrompt - Opening the cue list window for the first time

EdiLoad - While performing a Pro Tools re-conform for the first time

Example Mojave security message displayed for EdiCue

The versions of our apps that were tested with macOS Mojave are as follows:

If you are running macOS 10.13.4 or above you may have seen the following message when you run an application:

macOS 10.13.4 "App is not optimized for your Mac." warning message

This is a one-time alert that warns you that this is a 32-bit application that will require updating to 64-bit if you wish to continue using the latest version of macOS. The 'Learn More…' button links to an Apple Knowledgeable article.

We are looking to release 64-bit versions of our applications during 2019. This is not only required for them to run on macOS 10.15 (Catalina), but it also enables us to build them with the latest frameworks and development tools.

For some of our applications, moving to a 64-bit architecture is a major task. This is mainly due to the APIs (third-party software) that we use to build our applications with, as these also need to be updated to 64-bit. Some of these APIs haven't or won't be updated, and so we are now re-writing some application features to use a different approach. As you can imagine this can be a time consuming process and it is difficult to predict the duration of the work required.

The 64-bit applications that we release will also have a new operating system minimum version requirement, which is one of the reasons we've held off performing this update. At this stage our 64-bit applications will require:

We are pleased to announce that all of our iLok enabled applications can now be licensed using iLok Sharable Licenses. This allows our applications to be authorized from a license server on a local network, eliminating the need to have a physical iLok dongle connected to every computer running one of our applications.

Ideal for universities, schools and large facilities, sharable licenses provide a way of purchasing a single sharable license that contains two or more "seats". This license is stored on a physical iLok connected to the license server computer. Configured by the iLok License Manager application, the server then shares the seats of the sharable license to client computers on the local network when an application is run.

Illustration showing a license server activating 4 copies (seats) of an application over a local network using a sharable license that can activate up to 25 seats. (Illustration courtesy of Pace Anti-Piracy Inc, used with permission)

The license server can be configured to share the licenses with anyone on the local network (public) or restricted by invitation only (private). To have one of our applications use a sharable license, simply run it without a iLok license attached. When it doesn’t find a license it will offer the option to look for a sharable license on the local network.

Sharable licenses are ideal for classrooms or large businesses where it is desirable to store valuable software licenses in a secure central server room, thereby eliminating the exposure of having multiple iLok dongles attached to computers in classrooms or multiple edit/mix rooms. Sharable licenses also allow for licenses to be easily shared between Pro Tools systems as demand varies between the systems.

Over the years we've had several clients ask for help with jobs where they've wanted to use EdiLoad to re-cut a finished mix to create a new delivery version of a TV show or film. We call this process "reversioning". This task can be performed in a number of ways, depending on how the picture editor creates the new delivery version. So to help, we've created the demo video below which shows how the completed mixes of 12 TV episodes can be recut to create the sound track of a feature film length version. The video not only shows how you re-cut your Pro Tools session with EdiLoad, but what you need to supply your picture editor in order to perform this task in the most efficient manner.

This reversioning process is in some ways a combination of two processes that EdiLoad can perform:

• Conforming (assembling) location WAV files to match the audio edits in an AAF. This uses a single audio EDL.

• Re-conforming a Pro Tools sessions to match an updated picture. This uses two video EDLs which EdiLoad compares.

The reversioning process that is shown in the video uses a single audio EDL, but here individual tracks of the EDL are selected and used to re-conform a Pro Tools session. This is achieved with EdiLoad's unique ability to show events for a particular EDL track and allows sound editors to replicate the audio edits made by a picture editor when they have used individual stems to create the sound edit of the new delivery version.

If you need more information on Conforming (assembling) location WAV files, see this blog post. For more information on re-conforming a session when picture changes occur, see this video.

We are pleased to announce that all of our applications are compatible with Apple's latest operating system macOS High Sierra (10.13).

We successfully tested the functions of our applications that interface with Pro Tools on macOS 10.13.2, as this is the version of macOS that Avid have qualified Pro Tools v12.8.3 with. For more information on what versions of macOS are compatible with each version of Pro Tools, see the Pro Tools Operating System Compatibility Chart.

Have you worked on a show where the picture editor has edited an alternate take of dialogue for an on-screen line and not provided the original sync for the shot? Well to save time asking your editorial team for an AAF of the sync sound for these shots, you may be able to create this sync sound track yourself using EdiLoad and the Pro Tools field recorder functions.

New with EdiLoad v3.4.1 is the option to export an Avid Log Exchange (ALE) file from the WAV File List window.

EdiLoad WAV File List window

Using this file in combination with a picture EDL, for most productions, these will allow you to conform the location WAV files to create a sync sound track for all location shots of your film or television production.

Watch the following video to see exactly what is required and how you go about creating a sync sound edit list with EdiLoad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQU54S_xdWY

I hope this video helps you to streamline your dialogue editing. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments below.

Have you been given a folder of WAV files and wished there was an easy way of loading them into a Pro Tools session with them all located to their individual timestamps? Now with EdiLoad v3.4 you can do just this using it’s WAV File List window.

If the WAV files contain channel metadata, EdiLoad will also provide the option to sort the channels by channel name and number as well as name the Pro Tools tracks by the WAV file channel name and number.

So if you’re an ADR editor looking for a way to spot all the takes of an ADR recording into your edit session, or you have location WAV files that you need to spot to their timestamps before editing or mixing, check out the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGzMSbYelZs

I hope this video helps you to streamline your editing and mixing workflow. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments below.

Have you ever wished you could see where a scene starts and ends in your Pro Tools timeline? Now with EdiLoad v3.4 it’s even easier to generate a Pro Tools track containing clips showing where each scene starts and ends. You can also include the description of each scene within the clip name.

Scene Change Track shown in Pro Tools

This track can streamline the process of editing atmospheres, simplify selecting a range while applying mix automation for the duration of a scene, or automatically assign scene numbers and descriptions to ADR cues when using EdiCue.

Watch the following video to see how you can create one of these tracks with EdiLoad’s new ‘Create Scene Change Track’ window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TlhHHpwP-k

I hope this video helps you to streamline your editing and mixing workflow. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments below.